Where are the stats about guns saving lives? Stats about air travel deaths
compared to car travel are used all the time people to show the safety of air
travel so the comparison can be valid to use in gun safety as well.

I think you mean secede. No, Oregon did not secede from the union but there was
a book back in the 70s about that called Ecotopia that was pretty dumb that all
the hippies got excited over. Oregon already has enough rednecks.

No wobey responsible gun owners teach their children in the proper use of guns,
it is a minority of people who use guns improperly and illegal, the vast
majority of gun owners never use them in any wrong way. Only magic will remove
all guns from around the world and I hate to tell you but guns even find their
way into NZ and England.

I don't own a handgun but after this morning's drive through town I'm thinking
about getting one just so I can shoot the tires out from under the dillwads who
have to drive next to me with the base turned up so loud it vibrates my teeth.
How do ya like them apples?

I think we should pass the open carry law in every state in the US so we can
carry gun visibly. As a cop I would have rather seen someone carrying a gun
immediately so I could adjust for it when I talked to them. Open carry will not
make it like the old west, the old west was not like the movies portrayed it to
be either.

I think keeping a weapon concealed is pretty silly myself. As well as letting
cops better deal with a situation by having full awareness it puts the criminals
on notice as well. It makes more sense to me that concealing a weapon should be
illegal as it is something the criminals would do to hide their activities.

Having conceal laws work in 2 ways. 1) Anyone could have a gun. You just never
know. 2) Guns are hidden, out of view. Take a look around at youtube and you see
just how crazy people get when people with legit licence to open carry do just
that. People assume that if you have a gun your a criminal. This is true to the
extent that if you remove guns from legit people the only people left with guns
are non-legit people. Australia is a great example of this. Lately every few
days a report is in the news of a shooting. Yet guns where outlawed just after
1996.

The whole idea behind gun control is that you as a citizen are unable or should
be unable to defend yourself. It is a call by a society that citizens should be
dependant on the government for help at all times. Which is just crazy because
then in a democracy your expected to be educated enough to be able to pick a
candidate to represent you for a 4 year term by watching this person for maybe
30mins, maybe.

I think if you want to control guns you might as well tell people they shouldn't
be able to vote either. Lets all move to china.

The other side of gun control and removal of rights of citizens to own guns is
also the governmental side effect of essentially creating a country of
defenseless serfs at the same time.

Our rights to own guns essentially hinged on insuring we as a nation of peoples
could never be placed in a position to be defenseless against a corrupt govt.,
should such a scenario ever come to pass.

Our govt continues to encroach ever further on our rights on a multitude of
levels but if outlawing of individual weapon ownership ever came to pass that
slippery slope would more nearly resemble the ride down the Great Wall of China
Slide shown above

We are not powerless against the government. Should it ever get bad enough for
the American people to rise up against the government then the American people
would band together and rise up. If it ever got that bad then even some
military and police would rise up with us. Don't forget what the French
partisans did against the Nazis' during WWII, history is full of instances of
ordinary people banding together to stand against their oppressors. If we don't
have guns then we will use knives to get guns, it's just easier to start out
with guns.

It is not supposed to require any guns at all to make the government work for
us but the right to bear arms is there for all the right reasons. Ghandi pulled
off a non-violent revolution in India. People still died though. It is a shame
that it has to come to the use of deadly force in order to effect change in some
cases. I do not believe it will come to that in America. The American people are
going to take back the government eventually and gradually. The bi-partisan
system has to change and that is in the beginning stages I think. The
politicians need to quit fucking around and get to work. Do your fucking jobs
like the rest of America does.

I'm curious, where do you get the information saying there are more privately
owned guns than government owned guns? I don't doubt there may be, I can't find
anything making that comparison.

Ballot box stuffing, although it does exist, is not the biggest problem though.
The biggie is nothing/no-one worth voting FOR. Elections are more a matter of
voting AGAINST something/someone than otherwise.

If every voter in America would use their power of the vote to remove everyone
in office regardless of who they vote for it would send a clear message to the
government and that message would be more important than who wins the election.
The election process has become more of a communication tool than putting a
certain person in office noq.

USA and Australia are in similar situations. You can't get out of it in one
election.
We stopped caring for a decade and now we are living with the worst governments
in history.
It will take another ten years of educated voting at all levels of government,
local through federal, before we get good governance again. People have to give
a shit.
Passing a test before you vote would be a good idea too (in Australia).
When you go to vote, you must first name two policies of each of the three main
parties. If you pass that test, you can vote.

I'm all for poll testing too. Far too many people without a clue of the
candidates actual position on anything clamor to the polls and either vote the
straight party line or for the candidate that has somehow won their personal
popularity contest without a real clue at all of the effect of their votes, nor
do I think they even care.

Sadly here a simple test like what's the line of presidential succession is all
that would be needed to eliminate tons of these uninformed voters. If they
don't know the current pres, VP and Speaker of the House, they have no business
voting anyway

There are some self-tests online people can use to see how literate they are
about the government. I scored pretty high on one. I also did real well on a
similar science test. It's kind of fun.

Mis-information is often much worse than the lack of information. It is very
easy for people to make assumptions and decisions based on bad intel. With the
media being so untrustworthy it is very difficult to get the straight scoop. I
figure if we do the best we are able with what we have to work with that is a
good thing. I really try to not assume but I catch myself doing it too
sometimes. Must be sort of a human nature thing.

The internet is a great source of information and and even better source of
mis-information which seems to run amok at election time. I've got one friend
who is vehemently anti-Obama which I can't fault but he believes every bullshit
email people send him about Obama which just makes him look stupid when he
forwards it. I don't even bother to look at his political emails anymore because
they're so full of crap. He's of the follow the party line and talk trash about
the opponent ilk that have made elections something of a joke - no real issues,
just bullshit, bullshit, bullshit that keeps the same people sitting pretty no
matter which one of their guys gets elected, republicrat or demolican. People
are starting to wake up to it but are still in the "I like this guy but I'm
voting for that guy so we don't get that other guy" mentality.

I was readin the other day that viewership of all Tv is down and unseasonably
so, so much so that the broadcast and cable channels are truly perplexed by the
trend they're seeing.

They tried to play it off as the influence of how DVRs/TiVo have changed the way
people watch shows anymore. To some degree that's problee logical.

My hope, and I feel a big part being played in that trend, is that people have
become increasingly distrustful of the media and have chosen to turn more to the
web for their news and entertainment.

Without the web and the availability of international media online as well as
many "other" news outlets online, we in the US wouldn have a prayer in
knowin what's really goin on.

Maybe the media was always slanted, though I doubt ever so much as is seen
today, but, anyone expecting the news to simply be reported sans the
slant/agendizing it's given these days and hoping to find anything resembling
truth, then utilizing that view alone to help craft their views will be sadly
misguided.

It takes a lot more effort these days to dig down and find out what's
REALLY goin on

I know way too many people just like that Q-man. Every frikking conspiracy and
line o' BS they talk like it's gospel. Sometimes the most outlandish ideas are
the ones they think are the truest. I have to bite my tongue an awful lot. It
isn't that I don't believe just about anything imaginable is possible but that
somehow the things such folks believe sure seem on the imaginary side.

The closer information gets to empirical truth the more likely I am to believe
it.

I agree completely, the internet is a truly vast informational resource and
though it may be difficult to find I think some of the truth is out there. I
don't do TV these days and honestly don't miss it other than a few favorite
shows and I can watch enough of them online. It's crappy quality sometimes but
WTF, it works.

I think in time we will be able to pull our asses out of the shithole we're in.
It ain't easy but it has to be done. It'll take time and clear thinking.

I think a large part of the problem is that issues have become so complex, and
the population so huge with so many different agendas out there, that the
average person trying to just get by and support themselves and their family
just doesn't have time to dig through the heaps of bullshit to get at the truth.
Perhaps we needed this time of massive unemployment to give people the time to
discover the truth and to find their own voice. I see it in some of the
grassroots movements and I see it in the support for Ron Paul among the many
disenfranchised folks out there who have grown weary of "the man" and
the control he has over us. Unfortunately there is a large portion of the
population that believes the path to enlightenment lies through a big screen TV
with surround sound an ipad and a new car. Somewhere along the line the American
dream went from accomplishing something to aquiring lots of somethings.

The biggest problem I see with using the internet for news is the fact that
with so many unemployed and having to tighten their belts, the internet is
usually the first casualty of personal budget cuts. TV entertainment is usually
the last to cut because of the rest of the family. My grown kids are a perfect
example, their very first cuts are always the internet. After that though they
get stupid and cut their cell phones instead of their xbox 360s.

Can't imagine what I've saved over the past 10 or so years since I decided to
stop payin for Tv service.

$$ played a part in that but the mental bludgeoning that passes for
entertainment on Tv had a large part in it too. Though I miss the Discovery,
Biography, Learning channels and a few others, mostly I see it as good riddance
to bad rubbish.

When I lost my job in jan. 2009 I seriously considered getting rid of the
internet but then realized, in part because I was still on only $25 a month
dialup with an under $50 a month landline, that job searching was less expensive
on the net when you figure fuel used and newspapers bought. I had another job
from my internet searches in jsut a few months at a time when it was nearly
impossible to get a job around here. I had basic cable at the time and that was
the first casualty which I don't miss much.

It's the same thing up here on the other side of the continental US, Quasi.
I have age working against me too and age discrimination is rampant everywhere
and mostly unprovable even though everybody knows it is a huge problem that
affects an awful lot of people looking for work. Even though employers cannot
legally ask you for any information regarding your age or that would reveal your
age they still do anyway. If you don't give them the info they reject your
application as incomplete. That is some shit that needs to be cracked down on
right there. The laws are in place but they are unenforced in the current state
of affairs. Disability is another fuck story. Employers are supposed to make
reasonable accommodations for people who have any sort of disability but they
don't. I do not mean people who are on SS disability but those with medically
documented difficulties/disabilities. Equal opportunity laws are ignored.

We don't seem to have much problem doing without TV stuff. It'd be nice to have
but we have lots of tapes and DVDs to watch. Some we haven't even watched yet.
The internet is awesome for information, I must agree with you on that. There
sure is a lot of complete bullshit out there but intelligent people can usually
tell the difference between most BS and true info. I am learning to not pay as
much attention to headlines and more to content and if something interests me I
seek other sources because the media is a manipulative piece of shit, no matter
if it's on TV or online. At least on the `net you can find other sources of
information if you work at it a little.

If it ever comes down to it we will give up cigarettes and use that $400 a
month for cable TV but just hope it never gets that bad. My TV and internet
will be the last things I will cut and mainly because both are same cable
company. If need be my PS3, PS2 and all games will be sold before other things.
this is what my kids would never do. I have been able to reduce my cell phone
bill by half by making my kids get their own and disconnecting their numbers. I
did away with my land line years ago in favor of cell phones. The way I look at
things is "life sucks then you die",

True cells won't work during a massive power failure and land lines will for a
while, can't remember how long though, but land lines will not work either if
the central office is under water during floods or lines broken during
earthquake. I can also use land line if need be from a phone company pedestal
with a butt set. Used to work for GTE and have complete understanding of the
lines and wiring.

The telcos here have generators to keep the battery farms charged up and
working during power outs. It's part of the emergency services stuff that gets
funded with help from the gubmint I think. Several years ago we had power out
for over 4 days. The only things that worked were land line phones and one
little AM radio station.The hospitals, cops and fire depts have emergency
generators here too, of course. I always have a hard wired phone to plug in for
such things. It's a cheap piece of shyte but the fucker always works.

For a couple of weeks after hurricane Charley it was necessary to drive to the
next county to get gasoline (and face long lines doing it) because thhough the
stations here had lots of it in their tanks they had no way to pump it with the
power grid down. Now I believe it's mandatory for fuel stations to have back up
generators so they can keep pumping, though I think it's just another
crock-o-shit government regulation despite it's usefulness in a power outage.
It's usually decades between hurricanes hitting here and buying &
maintaining a big generator like that may not be cost effective for the
possibility of a once in a lifetime occurance. That said, I have small
generators for both mine and my mom's house, by my own choice, just as it should
be for any business not involved in emergency healthcare.

Oh, that's so great that the govt would help subsidize stuff for us ... oh, but
wait, the govt dudn have any money except for the money they take from us, so
that means they make the new rules requiring such stuff and then partially or
completely fund it with the money they took from us.

Oh yeah, and then these businesses have to maintain these newly required systems
in perpetuity, shouldering the costs of the new regulations ... oh, but wait,
they just pass those costs on to their customers in the form of higher costs for
their goods and services.

The reality is mandated govt regulations are just a form of indirect taxation,
without having to call it that of course, which is great for the politicians
since they don't have to own up to having passed the costs of their regulations,
subsidies and inherent additional costs for good and services on to the
electorate/consumer.

Windfall profits exist in many varying scales and while some may seem egregious
it all balances out over time.

If you found an X-Box you could snag for $5 and turn for $100, that's certainly
a example of a windfall profit, putting a smile on your face, $$ in your pocket,
food on the Goins table, etc. .

Later when you snag another one for $50 that you still turn for the same $100 as
the other one, that's an example of a more typical margin, generates no ear to
ear grin, but still keeps the Goins enterprise goin, food on the table, etc.
.

In all businesses windfall profits are a nice benefit but usually are not the
bulk or majority of a businesses sales and really just serve to help keep things
goin along.

They also help businesses to fund humanitarian functions like organizing workers
groups to develop highway clean up projects, fund Christmas parties and company
outings, make raises and bonuses possible and keep a companys doors open so its
employees can even have a job.

This is not to say all windfall profits are corporately moral and benevolent as
surely some are, while others aren't, but to make the case that they are not
inherently a bad thing and a part of all business, even yours

While I may occasionally make nice windfall profits but it is nothing compared
to the profits oil companies make which is never passed on to the consumer. I
don't believe the cost of a barrel of oil today supports the high price we are
paying at the pump at all. Seems to me our price should be less than $2.00 per
gallon.

Oil company executives are to blame for the high prices at the pump because
they only care about increasing their bottom line profits. Oil prices are not
higher now than they were back when gas prices were under $2.00 per gallon and I
doubt the cost to produce the gas is much higher than it was back then so why
are we paying so much at the pump? I think if they brought the price down to
$2.00 per gallon people would drive more and buy more gas thereby increasing
their profits even more.